Goldrick_Daland_2009.pdf

Phonology 26 (2009) 147–185. f Cambridge University Press 2009 doi:10.1017/S0952675709001742 Printed in the United Kingdom Linking speech errors and phonological grammars: insights from Harmonic Grammar networks* Matthew Goldrick Robert Daland Northwestern University Phonological grammars characterise distinctions between relatively well-formed (unmarked) and relatively ill-formed (marked) phonological structures. We re- view evidence that markedness influences speech-error probabilities. Specifically, although errors result in unmarked as well as marked structures, there is a markedness asymmetry: errors are more likely to produce unmarked outcomes. We show that stochastic disruption to the computational mechanisms realising a Harmonic Grammar (HG) can account for the broad empirical patterns of speech errors. We demonstrate that our proposal can account for the general markedness asymmetry. We also develop methods for linking particular HG proposals to speech-error distributions, and illustrate these methods using a simple HG and a set of initial consonant errors in English. 1 Phonological markedness and linguistic behaviour A central concern of generative phonological theory is to characterise the relative well-formedness of phonological structures. In this paper we will use the term MARKEDNESS to refer to distinctions in well-formedness (where well-formed structures are UNMARKED and ill-formed structures are MARKED). We adopt a broad definition of markedness, encompassing binary as well as gradient well-formedness distinctions both within a language and across languages. The characterisation of markedness distinctions has played a central role in accounting for ‘internal’ evidence * This research was supported by National Institutes of Health grant DC0079772. Portions of this work were prese